DONE@p.3 +++ 1:72 EKW D-4402, Schweizer Luftwaffe, 1949

[Dizzyfugu]

The kit and its assembly:
This major kitbashing project was spawned from the idea: "What if the Kyushu J7W Shinden had had a more conventional layout, as a twin boom pusher?". The overall proportions of a Hasegawa kit in The Stash™ looked promising, and I also had a Heller J21 kit that appeared appropriate to donate its tail booms and maybe other stuff, too.
On this vague basis I started to let the saw sing. Work started with the tail, because the J21's elevator span would define the distance between the booms and their location on the J7W's wings. Since the J21's fins appeared a bit small and to change the overall look I replaced them with the swept fins from the J7W, what required some serious PSR and a new location for the elevator.


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


In parallel I started with the fuselage, which would be heavily modified. Before hardware work even started, I decided that the J7W's radial engine would be replaced by a liquid-cooled in-line alternative, and I found the nose section of a Matchbox Hawker Tempest in the donor bank that had very good dimensions to make it fit in/onto the J7W's rear fuselage.


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


However, the exhaust stubs were missing, as well as the prop (which would have been much too big for the small space between the booms and for the ground clearance, anyway) – these were replaced with donors from a Special Hobby kit for late, Griffon-powered Spitfires. The respective contraprop was built with reversed blades, mounted on a metal axis (together with a matching adapter inside the Tempest's Sabre engine), and received a tapered "plug" to bridge the different diameters between the engine and the smaller spinner. However, the contraprop was just small enough to fit between the booms, so that it was a very plausible solution.

Since the Sabre was a liquid-cooled engine a radiator had to be mounted, and the J7W's original colling air intakes became superfluous. In a major stunt I decided to get completely rid of them and cut the respective fuselage walls behind the cockpit out and re-arranged and PSRed them into a slimmer shape that would blend directly into the Sabre section. Lots of work, but IMHO it paid out. The Tempest's massive chin radiator turned out to be unusable for the build, so I replaced it with a shallower alternative, mounted under the fuselage between the tail booms, partially covering the J7W's original landing gear well, which were filled because the landing gear would now retract into the tail booms, using the J21 parts.


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

Another major change was the nose section, which could only be tackled after the wings and the tail booms had been combined with the hull – the nose had to be shortened dramatically, but without knowing the proportions of the "new aircraft" any earlier attempt would have been very risky.
I eventually found a surprisingly good match (diameter and shape were almost perfect!) in a leftover nose section from an Airfix F-80 Shooting Star. However, one major problem persisted: the front landing gear and its respective well. Through the shorter nose it had to retract backwards, and the front leg's considerable length would make the well reach deep under the cockpit floor (taken over OOB from the J7W kit, just with a new seat, and the canopy was used, too, even though cut into three sections to present the model with an open cockpit). I was eventually able to implant the J7W's well, together with as much steel beads as possible, into the nose, so that there was actually a front landing gear well with full interior. Once the main landing gear struts had been mounted I decided to use the J7W's stalky front wheel strut.


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

...and eventually, after a LOT of PSR, things looked like this before painting  :


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

[Gondor]

That looks very interesting indeed

Gondor

[DogfighterZen]

 

[PR19_Kit]

The BUSINESS! 

Tophe would have loved it! 

[Dizzyfugu]

Tophe would have loved it! 

Even though it's not asymmterical. 

[PR19_Kit]

Even so, it's a twin boomer. 

[2996 Victor]

Great stuff! This is a great project - looking forward to seeing it progress!

Cheers,
Mark

[Wardukw]

Epic cool Diz ...contra-props and twin booms ..love it 😀 

[Dizzyfugu]

Epic cool Diz ...contra-props and twin booms ..love it 😀 

Yeah, the best of both worlds!    Here's some more, thing become more concrete:

Painting and markings:
This was quite a challenge, because I initially was not certain who the manufacturer and operator of this fictional aircraft should be? Japan and Sweden were initial choices, but since there had been some indigenous and quite exotic designs after WWII I eventually settled for Switzerland. Another reason for this choice was the fact that I had wanted to apply the rather unique "layered" camouflage on a model, and this was great opportunity.

I have no information about the colors/tones that had been used, e. g. on some Doflug D-3801/03 fighters or one or two EFW P.16 prototypes. But apparently some darker shades, including dark green and earth brown (and probably more!) were applied with broad brushes or even a mop over a grey uniform basis, probably the same light tone that was used for the undersides. From the poor b/w pics I'd say that every aircraft received an individual pattern, and I used a color picture of a P.16 (which offered a good view on the upper surfaces, even though in a very weathered state) as benchmark and tried to replicate the look. Here's a different pic of that aircraft, earlier in its career - but you get the cammo concept:



Things started with an overall coat with Humbrol 165 (RAF Medium Sea Grey). Then I used thinned acrylic paint to layer wavy lines with Revell 45 (Farngrau, close to RLM02) and 82 (Earth), both tones offered only little contrast to the underlying grey. Then came more wiggles with 42 (Gelboliv, RAL 6014) and finally with 84 (Lederbraun, RAL 8027) – resulting in a very disruptive pattern that really breaks up the airframe's outlines and hides almost all surface details. Disturbingly effective!


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

The cockpit was painted in a very dark grey (Revell 06, Anthracite) and the landing gear as well as the respective wells in a mix of Humbrol 11 and 165, for a dull metallic grey.
After that the model received an overall black ink washing as well as some post-shading on the lower surfaces – a futile task on the upper camouflage, because of its cluttered character!

Markings became minimal, just with Swiss roundels procured from an F-5E sheet for the fins and from a generic markings sheet from TL Modellbau for the bigger wing markings. The tactical code was adapted from a Swiss BAe Hawk trainer (U-1257, the U was turned into a J with a cutter knife...). To add some color I painted the spinner red and added fictional unit markings to the nose, as well as some red warning markings, stencils and fake louvres around the engine.

And, finally, here's a look at the finish line:


1:72 EKW D-4402, aircraft 'J-1257' of the Schweizer Luftwaffe, Berufsfliegerkorps Fliegerstaffel 11; Unterbach Military Airfield (Meiringen, Switzerland), 1949 (What-if/kitbashing] - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

[su27rules]

        Interesting!!

[Wardukw]

Yep..even more epic cool 😎..lovin this mate..really am 
It's annoying now as I'm looking for another 48th Hasegawa Shinden and before I had no issues..now the things have disappeared again 😁..typical 😒

[Old Wombat]

OUCH!

That camo is eye-watering!

[2996 Victor]

    

[scooter]

OUCH!

That camo is eye-watering!

Its certainly dazzling

[chrisonord]

That is marvellous Thomas